#blainebot

In Wizard In Glass, it's clear that part of how Blaine had "entertained" his higher profile passengers was through holograms that could perform sexual favors, given what he had said to Jake during the riddle contest.

When given the option to have a body made of alien tech, Blaine went the route of making it completely male, instead of monosexual like AMaton or not including a sex altogether like KARRbot. He sees himself as male, and so that's the hardware he gives himself. However he's sort of more like KARRbot than AMaton in that his genitalia is not set in one place, there's sort of a seam down the middle of his belly where adaptive manipulators and his genitalia can move freely to where he wants them. This is where I take a bit of inspiration from ratbat's dire machines, where Blainebot can maneuver his phallus wherever is most convenient (for himself, mainly).

Given he did mention the features of his holograms freely, Blainebot is comfortable with sexuality- and deep down he wishes to know what it is like, instead of detachedly witnessing what his holograms did to pleasure his high profile passengers. Male or female, it does not matter, he sees beauty in both. His eye does however, wander most consistently towards AMaton when he ponders the act. His form is quite alluring to him, strong yet curvy, and there's his face- his lips.

There's plenty of days where Blainebot has spent the hours contemplating him, and during their conversations there's nothing lacking in AMaton's personality either. He interests him more than Ted or KARRbot, and while he's not interested in fulfilling Ted's fears of stealing AMaton away entirely, he does have ideas in mind of perhaps taking AMaton for himself every now and again.

I got thinking about how in The Wastelands/Wizard in Glass, Blaine did show favorable treatment to someone who promised a challenging riddle, or plenty of riddles to keep his mind occupied/stimulated. In the Dark Tower books it was Jake, because he possessed Riddle-De-Dum, otherwise known as a massive book of riddles ranging from easy to highly difficult.

So, maybe Ted would not be snubbed so readily by him if he's making an effort to try and give him a challenging brain teaser- even if Blaine always solves them in a fraction of the time it took Ted to find them (or the time it took for AMaton or KARRbot to make a puzzle toy for Ted to give him). Although, Ted figured out that the promise of a challenging puzzle can be enough to keep Blaine's more favorable attention.

At one point, he offered a bargain; Blaine regales him with a tale of how life had been back in Lud before it started to die, and Ted gives him, in his words "the most challenging and difficult puzzle I have found, perhaps on this entire planet."

Blaine of course is skeptical, and Ted tries to hide the puzzle he brought a little more protectively the moment he sees the massive machine's pupils dilate and constrict with his cycling through different visual modes- scanning him thoroughly to try and get a look at it. From a distance it's almost like a horse trying to sniff out an apple hidden in it's owner's pockets.

So, after some protesting from Ted, and threats that he would not give the puzzle at all if Blaine kept trying to spoil the surprise; Blaine told Ted of how Lud had been. He recalled the polished city, the important passengers he would shuttle in his first class car, how he would entertain them along the ride to their destinations. It is but a morsel of his exceptionally long time spent in operation, but Ted listens with gleaming eyes and rapt attention at this new story.

At the conclusion of his reminiscence, it is now time for Ted to fulfill his part of the bargain, and from within the pocket of his orange jumpsuit is revealed...

A puzzle, as promised. But it is far from Ted's claims of being the most difficult puzzle on the planet.

If Genghis Khan was the song I was thinking of regarding how AMaton would feel about Ted favoring KARR's company for a while, I feel like the one regarding how Ted would feel about Blainebot stealing AM would be something along the lines of Dolly Parton's Jolene.

Ted is more scared of AMaton being swiped from him entirely because how the fuck would he compete with Blainebot. In a sense it could be explained as while Ted was fine with AMaton and KARRbot running off together for a bit because Ted knew that they both loved him too. So there was no real worry in his mind.

With Blainebot however he doesn't have those same feelings and he knows that Blainebot doesn't really love him; they're neighbors with a somewhat tenuous relationship. Ted knows he doesn't tend to screw around when he sets his mind to getting what he wants either.

When Blaine was allowed to make a new body for himself, he had figured out through looking at KARR's specs, that he could hide features from AM so he could not refuse his decisions. Granted at this point AM was not really worried about what Blaine would do. The monorail AI seemed to just be happy to find a way out of Lud and into a completely new environment that did not surround him with gangs of insane luddites fighting for control over the carcass of his city.

But, that did not stop Blaine from bending a few rules anyway. He hid an important function that placed him above both AM and KARR in terms of capability; teleportation. Short range or long range, Blaine could will himself to disappear and pop up somewhere else, heralded by a thunderclap as he reappeared.

It was the next step of evolution, Blaine had figured. He had been one of two monorails that could exceed the speed of sound, and now he upgraded himself to instantaneous travel from one point to another. He keeps his 900 mph top speed for the thrill of it, but when Blaine is serious about getting somewhere, he will teleport instead; it makes more sense as there is no designated path for him to run at top speed without worrying about charging through trees.

While he is the fastest one of the three machines, Blaine is not as nimble. During a personal contest between the two, KARR had run circles around Blaine, ducking around corners with ease and had been light enough to use the walls of the abandoned buildings rebound off of when taking a turn quickly- easily keeping control at speed while Blaine was forced to make larger turns and took longer to come to a stop when he needed to make a quick maneuver.

Given Blaine knows about places from Earth, it's not far fetched that probably he was able to travel to different places on Earth via some weird dimensional crossing type activities. Maybe certain stretches of track are like liminal spaces, or maybe Blaine had passengers that came from different worlds at some point.

Either way I'm thinking that if I'm going to stick him into the dynamic between Ted, KARR, and AM; he'll probably pop up in a subway tunnel somewhere- inexplicably clean and sleek despite the ruin around him. AM's complex runs beneath the entire surface of earth, so getting an uplink set up to transfer him into a quarantine within it is just a matter of finding some track that gets close enough to a connection point to allow it. He may not be IN the train, physically, but the train acts as a broadcast receiver, so he can just hop from Lud to the train, to AM's complex.

That said, I figure the body Blaine would pick for himself would be just as inhuman as KARR's. He probably would also find loopholes to get around AM's constrictions regarding the size of the body. He may not be able to be more than 12 feet tall, but the maximum length was not specified. AM may have overlooked this detail, but Blaine takes advantage of it; he emerges as a powerfully built semi-serpentine entity. Or maybe he's something like an extra long tardigrade in body.

Much to AM's concern, Blaine ends up being the largest of the three AIs that have made their home within the complex, and rushes through the winding passages at speeds neither he nor KARR can match. His strength exceeds the capabilities of both KARR and AM. The only offense ability he brings with him is his ability to produce electrical arcs- now focused into high voltage beams and arcs he can create along any part of his form.

He would still be sleek and powerful, plus he would hold onto his capability to break the sound barrier at ground level. With his several limbs, he could alternate between standing upright in a centaur-esque manner, or having all of his limbs on the ground. After having spent so long stuck on a track with only a few destinations, Blaine re-engineers himself to go anywhere; up walls, along the bottom of oceans, over mountains and down through valleys- he can even burrow into caves if he wished.